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R&D/marketing integration clearly improves new‐product development (NPD) effectiveness. However, achieving this integration increases the costs of NPD efforts. If technical and market uncertainty moderate the effects of integration on NPD effectiveness, perhaps a firm can achieve NPD success in a more cost‐effective manner by seeking the appropriate level of integration, based on the perceived level of uncertainty. In a study of 101 NPD projects at high‐tech firms in the U.S. and the U.K., William E. Souder, J. Daniel Sherman, and Rachel Davies‐Cooper explore the interplay between technical and market uncertainty, integration, and NPD effectiveness. Their study examines two types of integration: R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration. The study measures NPD effectiveness in terms of such indicators as NPD cycle time, prototype development proficiency, design change frequency (a negative performance indicator), and product launch proficiency. The responses from both the U.S. and the U.K. firms provide balanced samples of high and low uncertainty projects, as well as successful and unsuccessful projects. The results of this study support previous research regarding the positive effects of both R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration on NPD effectiveness. However, only one measure of NPD effectiveness—R&D comercialization effectiveness—was affected by both R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration. This result suggests that the two types of integration are distinct from one another and that managers need to emphasize different types of integration, depending on which aspects of NPD effectiveness their firms need to improve. The results also suggest that technical and market uncertainty influence some aspects of NPD effectiveness. For example, the perceived level of technical uncertainty was found to influence prototype development proficiency and to moderate design change frequency. In other words, these results support the idea that a high level of technical uncertainty warrants paying extra attention to increasing prototype development proficiency in the interest of reducing design change frequency. However, the results also reinforce the idea that NPD activities generally involve high levels of technical and market uncertainty, which means that the high cost of integration may be a requirement for NPD success.

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In markets characterized by high rates of technological and market change product life cycles tend to be shorter, resulting in the increased importance of competing on the basis of product development cycle time. For firms operating in these dynamic market environments, competing on the basis of cycle time may not only be a source of competitive advantage, but in some industries may actually be essential for survival. In this investigation the relative importance of five forms of cross functional integration and R&D integration of information or knowledge from past projects were explored in terms of their effects on product development cycle time. The five forms of cross functional integration included R&D/marketing integration, R&D/customer integration, R&D/manufacturing integration, R&D/supplier integration, and strategic partnerships. A sample of 65 U.S. and Scandinavian high technology firms (or strategic business units) were studied. The sample included firms from the computer, telecommunications, instruments, specialty chemicals, biotechnology, and software industries. The results demonstrated that R&D integration of knowledge from past projects explained the largest degree of variation in product development cycle time. R&D/marketing integration and R&D/customer integration explained the next largest degree of variation in cycle time reduction. Cross cultural generalizability tests demonstrated that the results were generalizable across the U.S. and Scandinavian samples of firms. In addition, the results were found to be generalizable across industry or product category for five of the six forms of integration.

Antimicrobial proteins and peptides are key effectors of innate immunity at mucosal surfaces in adult animals (21), but their role in host defense during perinatal intestinal development is not clearly delineated. Paneth cells are specialized epithelia in the crypts of the small bowel that control the intestinal growth of bacterial pathogens through the secretion of antimicrobial proteins and peptides (11). Paneth cells secrete their antimicrobial-rich granules upon exposure to pathogenic bacteria and bacterial products (1,11,12), and alphadefensins account for 70% of the secreted bactericidal activity of Paneth cells (1).Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis is a disease mainly of preterm human infants, but its pathogenesis is incompletely understood (8). It is hypothesized that abnormal bacterial colonization of the small bowel plays a role (3). A causative association between Paneth cells and necrotizing enterocolitis has been proposed because preterm infants inadequately express alpha-defensins in the small bowel (10). Additionally, Paneth cells in surgical specimens from human infants with necrotizing enterocolitis have a deficiency in lysozyme (4), a prominent antimicrobial protein in Paneth cell granules (11). The inability of neonatal Paneth cells to control the growth of bacterial pathogens in the lumen of the small bowel is an attractive hypothesis related to the initiation of necrotizing enterocolitis, but there is no in vivo evidence that Paneth cells provide host defense in the neonatal small bowel.This investigation postulated that ablating Paneth cells in neonatal rats would reduce the ability of the neonatal small bowel to clear an infection caused by enteroinvasive Escherichia coli. To test this hypothesis, dithizone was given systemically to neonatal rats. Since dithizone selectively destroys Paneth cells in adult rats (16), we quantified the effects of dithizone on the Paneth cells of neonatal rats. After dithizone treatment, newborn rats were infected with an intragastric dose of Escherichia coli, and the quantitative clearance of this bacterium from the small bowel lumen was measured.Effect of dithizone on Paneth cells in the noninfected neonatal small bowel. For studies that examined the effects of dithizone, specific-pathogen-free Sprague Dawley rats (Harlan, San Diego, CA) were studied between 4 and 5 days of age. The studies described below were approved by the Animal Use Committee of the University of California, Davis.Dithizone (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) was suspended in 25 mM Li 2 CO 3 buffer, stirred for 2 h at 37°C, and then filtered through preweighed Whatman 1 paper (Whatman Inc., Clifton, NJ). The filter paper was completely dried after filtration and was reweighed to determine the mg/ml of dissolved dithizone. The measurement of dissolved dithizone was used to properly dose administration of the dye.Three separate litters of 4-day-old pups were given an intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of either filter-sterilized dithizone (75 mg/kg of body weight) in mM Li 2 CO 3 buffer, 25 mM...

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ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00854633.